There’s an upside to Houston’s losing sports franchises

If Houston’s sports teams weren’t such losers, the following study might be something to really worry about. That’s because researchers have found that closely contested major sporting events are followed by a significant increase in traffic fatalities for fans of the winning team.

The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, analyzed traffic fatalities after 271 “big” games played between 2001 and 2008, including championship, tournament and rivalry games in professional and college football and basketball.

Specifically, they looked at traffic fatalities around where the game was played, and in the hometowns of the two participating teams.

To determine how close the game actually was, the scientists employed a panel of experts to rate how close each game was on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being a blowout and 5 being a nail-biter.

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Kareem Jackson does his part to make Houston roads safer.

After studying the data, the researchers found that close games produced more traffic deaths. In fact, each incremental increase in the closeness rating was associated with a 21 percent increase in fatal accidents at the game site.

Nail-biters produced 133 percent more traffic deaths than blowouts. Moreover, the researchers found that the increase in deaths occurred only in locations where there were winners, at the site of the competition or in the location of the hometown team.

“During a close game, testosterone increases for the fans as well as the players – that has been established by previous studies,” said lead author Stacy Wood.

“After the game, testosterone levels drop for the losing side, but spike for the winning side. Because testosterone is linked to aggressive behavior and potentially aggressive driving, we hypothesize that this may play a role in the increased number of traffic fatalities in areas with a high proportion of winning fans.”

Like I said, perhaps we can consider this a silver lining for the fact that in recent years, Houston teams have rarely played in big games and never actually won them.

Common, Eric, that is like saying lunch is dangerous because 90% of people who had accidents in the afternoon had lunch earlier.

The panel used people (scientists, but humans) to “rate the closeness” of the game. Then they would have needed to to interview more than 250K fans to determine who they rooted for. If they only made assumptions of fandom, it is a bogus study. If they did not interview the fans who got into accidents, it must have been a porkbarrel project paid for by stimulus funds.

Let’s see, if the game is close then people don’t leave early–they stay and drink beer. That could be part of the problem. And the home-field advantage is huge, especially in college and pro football. So the home team (which 90% of the fans are rooting for) usually wins. So there are significantly more drunk home-team fans than visitors driving drunk. Hence more fatalities.Conclusion: Testosterone? Probably not. Drunk fans of the winning home team? Probably.

Once again, male hormones are bad, all bad. All men should just be gassed as a danger to society.

Women are all good. They should be uplifted to the place of holiness that they deserve.

Who the heck bothered to spend a dime on this study? Who the heck cares? It’s not like anyone is gonna stop going to the big game. And who were the experts who decided what makes a game close? All games are close when they start. How close are they when they end? How long are you on the edge of your seat awaiting the outcome? It could well be adrenaline as much as testosterone or any other hormone that causes people to lose focus on driving. Btw, how many actual incidents/accidents/collisions are we talking about here? It would have to be a significant number over a significant period of time for it to even be statistically significant. Just because Berger calls himself the SciGuy doesn’t mean he’s smart enough to see through crap.

But I digress… Come on Eric! We all know that scientist can prove anything they want with their fancy mumbo jumbo! Facts can be manipulated and reality can be skewed. For example, people who run around saying the sky is falling because of global warming probably weren’t in town earlier this year when it got REALLY cold for a couple of days. I mean it was bitterly cold. I bet Al Gore felt a fool when he heard it was 20 degrees in Houston for a few days!

“Btw, how many actual incidents/accidents/collisions are we talking about here? It would have to be a significant number over a significant period of time for it to even be statistically significant. ”

@BillofRights – well, to start of, do you consider 7 years to be a “significant period of time”? ’cause that’s in the article if you read it. Is 271 games a “significant number”? ’cause that’s in the article, too.

As for how many accidents there were, it really doesn’t matter. If 1 accident is normal and 2 accidents commonly occur after close games, that could be statistically significant. If you study even rudimentary statistics, you will find that there are defined standards for significance. I am sure that the people who performed this study know enough statistics to understand this, and if the study has been published, it has gone through peer review cycles, which probably means the statistical differences are in fact significant.

If you want to troll somewhere, please do it elsewhere. This blog is actually one that is both interesting and well written, and we don’t need crap comments by people who only live to criticize others.

We all know that scientist can prove anything they want with their fancy mumbo jumbo!

Ah, yes – those evil scientists are so committed to taking over the work by any means necessary. Why, I’ll bet that they made up the whole bit about sanitation, too. Why don’t you prove them wrong by swimming in the intake pool of the sewer system?

Facts can be manipulated and reality can be skewed.

As you so amply demonstrate.

For example, people who run around saying the sky is falling because of global warming probably weren’t in town earlier this year when it got REALLY cold for a couple of days.

And the changes over a couple of days disprove those over a couple of decades because why, exactly? You have in effect argued that it is OK to jump out of a 30 story building because there may be a couple of updrafts on the way down.

JohnD, you need to start watching Fox News like me. That’s where you’ll get your news without any spin. It’s obvious to me that the liberal media has corrupted your mind!

I guess you were out of town in early February. It was REALLY cold. Oh sure, now it’s unseasonably warm, but it was COLD brother! I bet Al Gore is hoping he can continue making money with his fancy documentaries and books now!

JohnD, you need to start watching Fox News like me. That’s where you’ll get your news without any spin. It’s obvious to me that the liberal media has corrupted your mind!

Please, please tell me that you are pulling my leg! Fox news is at least as biased as every other news organization out there.

For the record, I get my information on scientific matters from the peer-reviewed literature, not from journalists. Even the best of them (sorry, Eric!) is not immune from glossing over details that should be highlighted, and the worst take a complex subject requiring years of study to understand (e.g., epigenetics, climatology, plate tectonics) and reduce it to a ten second sound-bite.

guess you were out of town in early February. It was REALLY cold. Oh sure, now it’s unseasonably warm, but it was COLD brother!

As noted previously, that’s like saying that you don’t have to worry about the drop from a 30 story tall building because of the updrafts on the way down. Those updrafts do not change the fact that gravity is pulling you toward a date with destiny, any more than a few, locally cold days change the fact that anthropogenic CO2 is warming the planet.

You were obviously not in town on Feb. 4 and 5. It was downright frigid! Instead of inventing the internet, Al Gore should have come up with something better than “global warming” because you will never convince me the climate is changing when it can get so, so cold in Houston, Texas – when we are in a sub tropical climate!

Great blog entry and even better caption. As a resident living near a high school that happens to be a perennial football powerhouse, should I evacuate Katy now or can I wait until late summer/early fall? Thanks!

You were obviously not in town on Feb. 4 and 5. It was downright frigid!

That’s two days, against 88. Guess which wins.

Instead of inventing the internet, Al Gore

Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet.

should have come up with something better than “global warming” because you will never convince me the climate is changing when it can get so, so cold in Houston, Texas – when we are in a sub tropical climate!

The analogy that many use is that anthropogenic climate change has loaded the dice so that warmer temperatures (and all the associeated effects) are more likely. Thus, just as you can still roll a “1″ on a die that has been loaded so that the “6″ shows up half the time, you can still get cold days in a warmer climate. You just get fewer of them.